THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1906. COLONIES AND EMPIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1906. COLONIES AND EMPIRE.

Recent events go to show that British statesmen have it very great deal to leant before they can be expected to realise the meaning of an Imperial policy. The disregard of the proposals made by Australia and New Zealand for the settlement of the New Hebrides question, and the final signing of a treaty with France which is quite detrimental to our colonial ! interests, may seem a very small matter to Little Englanders, but cannot be looked upon as calculated to exalt the reputation of Imperial authorities. Nor does the refusal of the Imperial sanction to the Australian preference proposals redound any more to the credit of British statesmen. In the matter of the New Hebrides, it is altogether probable that the French Government knew little more of the question than did Lord Elgin and Mr. Churchill, to whom our colonial interests were perforce committed. The French motive was as simple as it was evident—to extend the sphere of French influence in Pacific waters and to secure if possible the best natural harbour in that. j part of the ocean. The statesmen of | the United Kingdom, confused by the ! magnitude of their colonial duties, J looking upon territory in AustralaI sian waters with the same vague j eyes as those with which they look j upon territory in Central' Africa or I Malaysia, were temperamentally dis- : posed to make any arrangement i which would stive them worry and | trouble. They knew little, and could j care little, for colonial aims and as-

pirations. If they thought of them at all it was merely with a sense of grievance that distant colonies should have introduced new factors into their diplomatic problems. And it is this ignorance of the Empire, this indifference to truly Imperial questions, this habitual parochialism of mind, which hampers the reorganisation, upon sound and progressive lines, of the Empire to-day. Anglo-Indian interests are in charge of an AngloIndian Government, which controls its own border policy and directs its own treaty negotiations subject to the approval of the Government, of the United Kingdom. Failing the establishment of a representative Imperial Council is there any reason why governments of British colonies should not have the same privileges as the Anglo-Indian Government? Why should 5 not the Australian Federation negotiate directly with the French Government upon the Xew Hebrides question, submitting the result for the approval or disapproval of the Foreign Office.' If the French wish to be friendly with Australia and Xew Zealand they would hardly care to override any reasonable proposition and it is absolutely certain that British interests in any part of the world would be much better understood and looked after by the British States immediately concerned than they ever have been by statesmen and officials who show by their action how completely ignorant they are of distant interests. In the difficulty that has arisen over the Australian Preference Bill we have an equally flagrant instance of the ineptitude of Imperial statesmen. The Australian Commonwealth, so far from having presented for the Imperial approval a disloyal and unpatriotic measure, desires to establish a procedure which is entirely in the interest of genuine British shipowners. And why is it blocked ' Simply because Imperial statesmen have made stupid commercial treaties with Egypt, Greece, Italy, Japan, and Russia. The great commercial rivals of Britain— the United States, Germany, and France—are not affected, for the very good reason that they would not dream of making with Britain or any other country a commercial treaty which would prevent them from favouring their own. Had our Imperial statesmen been imbued with the Imperial idea, had they absorbed from the Imperial spirit of the age a living conception of its practical application, they would long ago have ceased to tie the hands of our self-governing colonies by absurdly obsolete commercial reI strictions. Because Greece and Egypt, Italy and Russia and Japan— inferior or Asiatic nations, one and all of the five—have thought it to their interest to bind themselves in this fashion the great Empire of the British is to be bound also by the act of parochial treaty-makers. We oversea British—because Russia and Japan and Greece have been given the right to object—must, not do as we would in a mallei that clearly : conduces to the strength and progress of the British peoples. The 1 Americans, tin- Germans, the French, may well look on and scoff at our Imperial blundering, at a great worldpeople whose struggles towards national cohesion and unity are hampered by tin; denationalising efforts of men who sit in London offices and know more of the Riviera than they do of their own over-sea lands. It might be worth the while of the colonies to send lecturers through the United Kingdom and thus to inform Si. Stephens and Whitechapel and Wessex what the Empire is. They know at Home that we sent contingents to South Africa and oarsmen anil footballers to carry off. sporting laurels. But they do not seem to know-, either in the Foreign Office or anywhere else, that we are making Englands all over the world, and that the narrow seas no longer confine the heritage of free-bom Englishmen. For if they did they would not dream of ignoring our wishes in such questions as that of the New Hebrides, and would fling aside for ever the amazing delusion that, the world being what it is. we should not favour one another's trade and ships against all others. Meanwhile, all that we can expect is that every blunder by which Imperial interest's are being sacrificed will help to arouse a more intelligent perception of what is at stake and we must hope that a more Imperial frame of mind will dominate in London before Imperial reorganisation has become impossible.